


Two Winters on the Road and one Kiss

by thelongcon (rainer76)



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: First Times, M/M, Rickyl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-15
Updated: 2015-10-15
Packaged: 2018-04-26 11:41:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,720
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5003404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rainer76/pseuds/thelongcon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The meat Daryl waves at him is charred black, scrawny. He says: “Here.”  It’s the rump, the more generous flesh of rounded haunches. Rick opens his mouth to decline and Daryl strikes like a snake.  A spike of bone bloodies Rick’s lip, the rough entry bruises the roof of his mouth, Rick chokes, staggering back with the meat jammed between his teeth.  “Eat it,” Daryl snaps, and glowers at him from across the small fire. He doesn’t back down and he doesn’t let his attention slip. He watches Rick like a hawk until he’s satisfied Rick’s chewing. </p><p>Warm blood, charred meat: Rick’s dizzy with the scent, mouth watering, suddenly ravenous with it.  Uncomfortable, he wants to dodge the other man’s scrutiny.  “I liked my first date better.”</p><p>Daryl’s expression goes weird, it loses some of the ferocity. “Happy fucking valentines.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Two Winters on the Road and one Kiss

_After the Farm:_

 

 

“I brought Lori roses on our first date,” Rick says, nonsensically.

“Yeah?” It’s half-assed, the tone people use when they’re not paying attention.  There’s a quartet of squirrels on a string, scrawny and starved, not enough meat off their bones to feed eight people.  Daryl’s hands are wrapped in mittens, the fingers cut off.  “You’re a romantic.”

“I was young,” Rick shoots back.  He hides the grimace as Daryl guts one of the critters, dips frozen fingers into its intestines and lets the warmth heat up his digits. Daryl stays like that for a long moment, four fingers buried inside the carcass. “You’re eating that one,” Rick mutters, under his breath.

“Cooked and gutted – won’t matter any.”

The lion’s share of the food goes to Lori, Carl and Hershel, but Daryl’s the one who does the hunting, the greatest expenditure of energy, and Rick keeps a tally of the plusses and minuses.  He tilts his head.  “That’s not what I meant.” 

Rick ate yesterday and they’re not shy of water. The sky opened up a week ago and it hasn’t stopped pissing down since, creeks and river beds swollen brown, their wheels stuck in the mud.

Daryl pulls his fingers out, stained red, and blows on them. “Half,” he says, stubbornly. “You want the ass-end or the brains?” The rest of it will go to the group; he waits a beat, then frowns when Rick doesn’t respond.  “We’ll eat by candle-light if you damn well want, but you _are_ eating.  Keep your strength up.”

“We need to find a hole,” Rick protests.  Shelter, some place they can lay up until Lori delivers the baby, his attention is already drifting away, running in circles, attention span gone with the more serious concerns of survival.

“Ass-end it is,” Daryl affirms.  He starts skinning the squirrel, teeth caught in his lower lip, he looks grim. “Stupid prick,” he says, under his breath. 

The little pile of twigs doesn’t catch on the first light or the second, Daryl cups his hands around the match until eventually he succeeds, he blows air against smouldering smoke, voice reverent as the flame grows and wickers.  Rick listens to the noises he makes, the low rumble of Daryl’s discontent.  Rick’s not weak – far from it – and he’s not hungry, he feels hollowed out, eyes and cheeks gaunt.  Lori’s going to give birth soon and if Rick’s does the math backward, he can’t tell if it’s his kid or Shane’s they’re expecting. “Give it to Hershel,” he orders, appetite non existant.

Succinct, Daryl says.  “I’ll ram it down your throat.”

He had given roses to Lori on their first date. She had seemed radiant, her smile wide, rising up from the chair to peck Rick on the side of the cheek. It was a two star Michelin restaurant, Rick had saved up for the occasion and they spent the night talking over medium-rare meat, wine, and desert, the food so fine it melted in his mouth, a burst of subtle, and conflicting, flavours.   Lori was vibrantly alive, she laughed at his jokes, spent long minutes scrutinizing the menu, she watched the waiters and the people nearby, commenting on their outfits, and drew lazy patterns against the Chantilly lace of the tablecloth.  Rick had talked faster, increasingly desperate, anything to draw her attention back to him, to be graced by her incandescent smile.

The meat Daryl waves at him is charred black, scrawny. He says: “Here.”  It’s the rump, the more generous flesh of rounded haunches. Rick opens his mouth to decline and Daryl strikes like a snake.  A spike of bone bloodies Rick’s lip, the rough entry bruises the roof of his mouth, Rick chokes, staggering back with the meat jammed between his teeth.  “Eat it,” Daryl snaps, and glowers at him from across the small fire. He doesn’t back down and he doesn’t let his attention slip. He watches Rick like a hawk until he’s satisfied Rick’s chewing. 

Warm blood, charred meat: Rick’s dizzy with the scent, mouth watering, suddenly ravenous with it.  Uncomfortable, he wants to dodge the other man’s scrutiny.  “I liked my first date better.”

Daryl’s expression goes weird, it loses some of the ferocity. “Happy fucking valentines.”

 

 

***

 

_During Alexandria:_

 

He finds Rick roped off against an elm tree, stately branches bare of leaves, it’s trunk is old, twice as thick as the average man. One side of Rick’s face is a mask of blood, caked black, and his legs are half buried under snowfall - three feet of it, fresh powder - the sky’s white, the ground white, and Daryl’s eyes are burning with the reflected glare, with a relief that has him stumbling forward. 

“Rick!”

It’s the first winter outside of Georgia and Daryl’s ready to turn tail and bolt.  He hates this shit.  Ground cover that hides the shape of walkers, they’ve already lost Tara, on a hunt when the snow erupted from under her feet, hands clawing at her ankles, her calf torn apart.  Granted, it slows the walkers down, petrified with the cold, but it hides things Daryl would much rather see. 

“Hey, hey, Rick!”

He pushes through a snowdrift, scrambles up the incline on his hands and knees and throws himself forward.  Rick’s cheek is ice-cold under his palm, head tilted toward the sky. “Breathe,” Daryl pleads, and puts his hand under Rick’s nose, lays his ear against Rick’s chest. He’s wearing too much clothing. Daryl can’t tell if Rick’s bit, but there’s no blood other than the head-wound and at the moment cold is the primary concern.  “C’mon, man.”  There, _there,_ a slow, reluctant thump.  Daryl pushes away.  He bites down on the tip of his glove, strips the glove off and yanks his knife out.   It’s the work of a second to cut the rope – hitched at Rick’s hip, pectorals, and throat, to ease Rick forward gently and scrabble the snow away from his legs.

There’s a rage building inside, a fire so intense he’s burning with it.   

They left Rick here, alive, for walkers to find and eviscerate - and if not that - then for the cold to kill him, to change him forever.   They roped Rick down like he was meat; a sacrifice to the gods.  Fuckers, he curses, they fancy themselves as wolves then Daryl is going to tear their throats out.

His hands are shaking.  “C’mon, man,” he urges.

During the hunt Daryl was fine for the first few hours - the snow made tracks clear as day and he was making good time in catching up to their party - then the weather turned sour, wiped away the evidence like a crooked cop, and one by one, the others turned back, driven home by the elements.

Daryl gets a shoulder under Rick, eyes shimmering with the glare.  He only makes three steps, Rick lax and unhelpful, before their feet tangle in the snow and they face-plant together.  Daryl curses, dusted in white, and grabs at the rope again.  “Sorry.”  There’s already a ligature mark around Rick’s throat, a dusky line, and it’s a wonder when he finally fell unconscious that Rick’s head hadn't slumped forward, hadn’t choked himself out, changed himself to a place Daryl couldn’t reach. 

If he had a tree branch, plank of wood, _plastic_ , it would be easier.

Daryl has a knife, the rope, his crossbow, and a location fixed in the back of his mind, a safe harbor to drag Rick to and get him out of the elements.  He slices the rope into three, then with the separate strands he ties both of Rick’s wrists to his gun-belt, keeping Rick’s _arms_ down and fixed at the hip, unable to flop about or slip a noose.  Daryl hitches the third rope around Rick’s torso, hooked under his armpits and stumbles to his feet.  He takes a breath, eyes cutting across the snowfield, searching for his own footprints.  The snow falls; cotton soft, and the land's gone white as a moonscape, twice as alien. A crow hops along a few paces away, head tilted curiously.  Daryl gathers the rope and tugs, floating Rick’s body across the snow.  Head bowed, shoulders hunched, chest labouring like a steam-engine, Daryl trudges onward; with each step, he sinks to his kneecap.

Hate isn’t something he’s felt for a while, not since the early days when he wore it as a default shield, but he hates now. With every chattering breath he revels in it.  “Washington,” he lists.

“This ain’t winter, it’s fucking Siberia.”

“Gonna whomp those assholes,” he vows.  “Gonna gut them wide.”

“Roses.”

“The quiet.”

“You…laying on your sorry ass.”

Daryl’s eyes are blind with tears by the time he finds the house.  He smashes a window open and rolls, tumbles, mostly falls inside, hand around his knife and his ears making up for the near loss of sight, every sense stretched to high alert. It’s dark.  Pitch black after the unrelenting white of outside and the house whistles, creaks, but there’s no tell-tale shuffle of feet. No hungry moan.

Daryl leans over the windowsill, snatches the rope and hauls on it hard, hitching Rick’s upper body until it’s high enough to grab. He curls both arms around Rick’s mid-riff, face smashed into the other man’s spine, bone tired after the hunt and the drag.  With Rick braced against the windowsill Daryl doesn’t have the energy to do anything other than fall backward, bearing the brunt of the impact as they topple against the kitchen floor.  “There,” he wheezes, with Rick sprawled on top.  “Warmer than a mansion.”

Rick feels like solid ice.  There’s snow caught under his clothing, jeans, jacket, all of it wet. His lips have turned blue.  Daryl doesn’t coddle him or waste further time. He strips Rick naked, shoes first, then jacket, shirt, gun-belt, jeans, socks, underwear, all of it piled neatly on the kitchen floor – the broken window is the only source of natural light and Daryl’s time is limited.  The head wound is superficial but nasty, it bled like a stuck pig, and Rick carries an assortment of scars at his shoulder – Morgan’s knife wound – mid-riff from the coma, and a few others from the governor.  His skin is fish-belly white, body lean; his cock is a small nub, curled up defensively between his legs.  For all of Rick’s facial hair he doesn’t carry much on his body. He’s whittled down to muscle and bone.

Daryl touches him from skull to toes the same way he’d touch a dog, with ownership and with every sense of right.  “Bed upstairs.  You’ll be warm under the blankets,” he says hoarsely. It’s weird to look at Rick like this, bared and small, when the other man lies insensate.  In the past Daryl has tried so hard to avert his gaze, and this display of skin feels like a bounty. It sits in Daryl’s stomach uneasily. “Flip over, gotta check.”

The bite, when Daryl discovers it, is on Rick’s shoulder-blade, the flesh torn ragged, a ring of bloody teeth-marks.  His fingers stutter and jerk. Daryl’s heart hammers into triple time.   Stunned senseless. It doesn’t matter how many times he blinks the mark doesn’t fade, and when Daryl scrubs at the flesh, trying to erase it, it oozes blood sluggishly.  “Son of a –“ he wheezes.  “Son of a –“ and he can’t pretend it’s snow blurring his eyes, Rick’s lax, warm, he’s still _breathing_ under Daryl’s hand.

He thinks there’s a whine in his chest, knocked loose, and uncaged.

Slim shoulders, spine, the perfect curve of Rick’s buttocks - his long legs - and that bite on his shoulder like the darkest blight.

 

***

 

Rick wakes up slow, pillowed in warmth.  There are blankets hitched up to his chest, a cavern of heat.  Daryl’s situated near the bed, back against the wall with his knees curled into his chest. In the dark, his expression is unreadable, hair in his eyes, his regard stony.

“Y’all came.”

“Yeah,” Daryl agrees.  “Wasn’t sure if you’d wake…or if the fever ’d get you first.”

Rick remembers freezing to death while tied to a tree; he doesn’t recall a fever.  Daryl stirs, crossbow at his feet, and turns the knife over in his hand deliberately.

It’s thirty seconds too late - when the pins and needles finally registers in Rick’s awareness - or how he’s tied to a bed-frame, stark naked under the blankets, arms above his head.  It’s like waking up the first time with Morgan after the coma, disorientated, wounded, spread-eagled.  “Daryl?” he rasps, confused.

“You were bit.”

“No I wasn’t,” Rick denies, by reflex.

“Sure?  Shoulder-blade has tooth marks in it.”

It’s terror that grabs Rick; it gnaws the composure straight off his bones.  He twists on the bed, frantic, trying to _see._ The blankets rustle and slip, piling at his groin, his legs kick out, in the cold his skin pebbles, turns his nipples hard.   Rick strains, contorts against the rope, but jesus it’s tight.   “Cut me loose.”

It’s still snowing outside.

Daryl shrugs.  “Thought about killing you quick.  Knife to the skull.  You were out with the cold already, half dead. Wouldn’t have to wake up or feel the change. Be a mercy.” There’s something off about his voice, cracked like a distant radio.  “And if the snow doesn’t let up before the change, then Carl wouldn’t have to see any of it.”

“No,” Rick says, because he’s starting to remember now, adrenalin fueling him.  “Which shoulder-blade?  He bit me, he did, but he wasn’t dead and I’m not sick.  I ain’t.”   Rick closes his eyes, forces himself to be still.  “I know what you think.”

“Zero tolerance for walkers.”

“Yeah,” Rick breathes, christ yeah -  “You know what I say—“,

And maybe that wasn’t true anymore, but it was true for those on the cusp, the ones who were bitten and courting death - farewells were allowed, graces were given – Rick’s tied to a bed, head intact. “We don’t kill the living, Daryl, we don’t – “   We let them say goodbye first, the ones they love.

Daryl’s smile is a death-mask.  He looks exhausted, shadows under his eyes, he looks like something was torqued, twisted out of relief.  “Hey, there, Rick,” he greets.  “Been a few years.”

“Hey,” Rick returns, softly, his eyes searching Daryl’s face.

“Who bit you?”

“Talyn, one of the Wolves.  He was alive…he was, I don't know, acting out.”  The rule is simple: Daryl asks and Rick answers promptly, he does it politely as possible while tied to a bed.  The blankets, pooled to one side and over his groin, start to slip after his earlier struggles, it’s a slow tickling slide to the floor.  “He was alive, okay?  Not infected, not a walker.  Just an idiot.”

“Sure,” Daryl agrees.  His eyes fix on the cut above Rick’s eyebrow, weighing head injury against memory Rick presumes.  “But we’re gonna wait for a while, anyways.” 

It took three days for Jim to turn, it took Shane less than thirty seconds. Rick fidgets in his bonds and says impatiently. “Screw that.  You think I’ll walk off into the woods to _die_?  Or do you think I’ll get the jump on you when I ‘turn’ and attack?” Impotent, Rick jerks his legs again, the only part of him he _can_ move.  “Dammit.  You don’t need the ropes, Daryl, neither will happen, for one: I’ll put a bullet in my own head, thank you, but even if it _is_ the second you’re too quick to let it happen.  You’ll kill me – when the times calls for it – you won’t even hesitate.” Rick says it forcefully, an order through and through, he sets his gaze on the roof as the blankets lose their fight with gravity, spooling to the floor.  “Cut me loose.  Please.”  Daryl murmurs something, too quiet for Rick to catch, he looks ill and Rick’s attention sharpens a notch.  Irritation transitions into concern.  “Hey, hey!” he says, trying to wipe the expression away.  “I’m fine.”

“Yeah,” Daryl says wearily.  His stare is frank, unsettling and direct.  “Okay.”

Rick feels his skin flush red under the examination, his body go hot: “I ain’t sick,” he reiterates, because it's not that type of fever.

“Been telling myself that all my life.”

 

 

 

Later, when Rick’s concussion was gone, when Daryl – who ironically _did_ get ill afterward – spiking a fever that had them all worried – Rick would run the entire conversation over in his head and find himself stuck on it, like a record caught in a groove, listening to the notes and discovering something terribly, terribly, wrong.

Rick’s skin blushes every time their eyes meet. His wrists itches like a rope burn.  Flustered and strange inside, he turns away. 

In his dreams, when he replays that exact moment, Daryl does more than stare at his body, in his dream Daryl repeats Rick word for word, with the air of the despondent.   I won’t hesitate.  On his cross, with his hands bound wide, Rick can look down upon him, this disciple – _I won’t hesitate_ – and recognise his Judas. Breathless, Rick wakes up with his lungs on fire, with his cock hard and leaking into the mattress. 

 

 

***

 

“Washington,” he lists.

“This ain’t winter, it’s fucking Siberia.”

“Gonna whomp those assholes,” he vows.  “Gonna gut them wide.”

“Roses.”

“The quiet.”

“You…laying on your sorry ass.”  Daryl talks because Rick told him once he could hear people in the coma - conversations would come and go, people would filter through - and he doesn’t want Rick to be alone in the wasteland of nightmare and semi-consciousness. At the half way mark his long list of pet hates grows to include a few home truths too.  “I said cold, didn’t I?  Abraham and fucking D.C.”

“Alone.”

“Eugene’s hair.”

“You – the thought of you being dead.”

He admits brokenly:  “I think I’d hesitate.”

 

***

 

 

When Rick was fourteen, his father walked into the bedroom unannounced and found him making out with Thomas Mathews.  His parents had fought bitterly and for the first time in his life, John Grimes raised a palm against his boy. The slap was like a thunderclap.  Tommy ran.  Rick hadn’t.

When Rick was sixteen, he’d watch Shane surreptitiously; the long planes of his body, the confidence in his limbs. Rick coveted his friend but didn’t touch – some small part of him convinced the weakness might be exploited – ‘sides, Rick was happy with the companionship.  When he was seventeen he met Lori for the first time.  “Oh, thank god,” his mom said, when Rick announced his intention to marry.  “Your father didn’t understand, it’s _natural:_ experimentation, especially when you’re a teen.”  She smiles tumultuously at Lori, sitting outside on the porch with Rick’s father.  “He didn’t need to worry so much your dad.  All of that nonsense is behind you now.”

Worse than a slap, the words were a knife between the ribcage.  Numb, Rick had explained.  “I chose the _person_.”  It didn’t stop anything else, he could still remember the way Tommy felt, the rabbit-beat of his heart, Rick can concede the beauty in the male form as readily as the female, he still can, he doesn't expect it'll change.

Perplexed, she had agreed.  “Of course you chose her dear.  It's good that you've decided.”  There are some catch-phrases that are carried through-out life, _They don’t get it_ , is one of Rick’s favourites.  

When he’s thirty-nine years old, Rick finds himself naked and tied to a bed.  He’s warm under Daryl’s eyes and the only thing that keeps him from growing hard, is how _off_ Daryl’s reactions are to him. Rick’s concussed, sore, and one of the wolves had bitten him like an animal – but the greatest mistake they made was leaving Rick alive.  He flushes red on the bed.  He remembers this flicker of desire.  For the first time in a long time, he wants.

Daryl looks at him, _really looks at him,_ and the darkness in his eyes is a cliff-drop.

 

***

 

“I don’t want to be your breaking point,” Rick says.  It’s been days, feel like weeks, where Daryl successfully managed to be everywhere Rick’s _not._ If there were an Olympic sport for the category, then Daryl’s running for gold, and if it continues any longer the strangeness between them will grow to a crevice.

“The hell?”

Rick drops down beside him.  Jute is patterned into his skin, the rope burns from the bed or maybe from being dragged across the snow.  Helplessly, Daryl stares at his wrists, the tell-tale marks peering out from behind Rick’s shirt cuffs.

“It’s been a while since I done this with anyone, and I’m getting the impression maybe you haven’t - done it at all - but I’m choosing you.” Rick wets his lips, it’s the only hint of unease in his demeanour, his voice steady.  “If you’ll have me, that is, I want you.”  In bed, on the sheets, or under the sheets, with Daryl’s dark head buried between his legs.  Rick wants his mouth on him.  He wants to curl around pleasure and remember what it's like.  He wants to cup his hands around the glimmering crack and mend it - because Rick’s not going to die any time soon and he’s not going to be Daryl’s breaking point – he wants to feel Daryl go pliant, and Rick's tired of turning his face away.

Rick has a thistle in hand, roses don’t grow in snow and March has been abnormally brutal in D.C, the winter long, or so Deanna says; Rick’s using it as a distraction, shredding the tip, spilling violet flowers at both their feet.  He’s blushing, Rick knows, gone furiously red, a reaction he thought he’d outgrown and beyond his control.  He wants to suck Daryl's cock, jaw pried open and his chin slick with spit - he wants the companionship, the body - he wants everything Daryl will give.  Rick always _has_.  He can feel the intensity of Daryl's regard.  Rick has his attention, Daryl’s been hyper-aware of him since the day they met. 

“I’ll show you,” Rick encourages, and curls the hand with the thistle around the other man's bicep, this scrap of weed that won't quit, and because in his dreams Rick can recall the drone of Daryl's voice, dragging him through the snow.   He doesn't like roses.

“I’ll teach you how,” he whispers, and leans in until their mouths meet.

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
